Royal Mint opens facility to recover gold from e‑waste in Wales
9:12 AM EDT, August 18, 2024
The Royal Mint, the official producer of British coins, is opening a new facility in Wales to extract gold from waste. The factory will process up to 4,000 tons of e-waste annually. In addition to gold, silver, palladium, iron, aluminum, and copper will also be extracted.
The British will recover gold from e-waste in the town of Llantrisant in Wales through a special chemical process. Additionally, silver, palladium, iron, aluminum, and copper will be recovered.
The entire undertaking is backed by The Royal Mint. The new factory located in Wales will provide a more sustainable source of gold and reduce reliance on mining.
Located in southern Wales, the 40,000-square-foot facility will use proprietary chemistry from the Canadian company Excir to extract gold from printed circuit boards (PCBs) in products such as TVs, laptops, and cell phones within minutes.
Excir's chemicals work at room temperature, creating a more energy-efficient and cost-effective method of recovering gold.
The British are scaling the technology from the laboratory to the industrial level. The recycling process can process up to 4,000 tons of e-waste annually. This will provide the British with a new, more sustainable way of "mining" high-quality gold with 999.9 purity. The recovered gold will be used to produce jewelry.
4,000 tons of e-waste can contain up to half a ton of gold. The Royal Mint plans to produce jewelry from the recovered element. For one gold ring, 0.26 ounces of precious metal is enough.
According to the United Nations, global e-waste production is growing by 2.9 million tons each year. In 2022, a record 68 million tons of e-waste was produced. By 2030, discarded electrical devices are expected to rise to 90 million tons. Colossal amounts of gold and other elements are to be recovered.
